In Of Mice and Men what trouble did George and Lennie have in the town of Weed?

Before the novelette's action begins, George and Lennie are run out of the town of Weed because Lennie had once again gotten himself and George in trouble.  He saw a girl wearing a soft dress, and he touches it because "he likes to feel soft things." The girl naturally does not respond well to a stranger pinching her dress and tries to escape, but Lennie will not let go.  George and Lennie are literally forced to run for their lives when the girl cries for help.

The incident serves two purposes.  First, George references it to show the difficulties that Lennie has caused for the two of them, and Steinbeck uses to show that they are still loyal to one another.  Secondly, Lennie's penchant for touching soft items and especially getting them into trouble over a girl foreshadows the horrific incident in the barn with Curley's Wife.

If The Kite Runner were a tragedy, who is its main tragic protagonist?Are both Baba and Amirprotagonists? And couldone refer to Afghanistan as a...

While one could logically argue that Baba, Amir, and the country itself are all protagonists, Amir meets the requirements most thoroughly of a tragic hero. 

Tragic downfall: Amir is viewed as the only son of one of Afghanistan's most prestigious businessmen.  He not only literally falls from his wealthy, respected state to being an unrecognized struggling immigrant in America, but he also figuratively falls out of favor with "God" or morality because of his betrayal of Hassan. 

Tragic flaw: Amir's tragic flaw is jealousy/selfishness.  He wants Baba's approval so badly that he is willing to get rid of or sacrifice anything that gets in his way. While he sacrifices Hassan in order to get the last fallen kite, he also realizes that if he gets rid of Hassan, he will no longer have to divert Baba's attention from the young servant boy.

Tragic realization: When Amir realizes that he must go back to Kabul to rescue Hassan's son and ultimately faces Assef again, he experiences somewhat of a realization that he has brought most of his trouble upon himself.  His true realization occurs when he recognizes his responsibility to Sohrab and pursues adopting him and bringing him to a safe place--America.

While Baba also goes through the main steps of a tragic hero, he dies before he truly has an opportunity for a tragic realization.  He never confesses to Amir that Hassan is his half-brother or truly apologizes to Amir for showing no interest in his writing until he is on his deathbed.

Likewise, the jury is still out on Afghanistan.  Perhaps it will have a happier ending and a positive "realization."  Right now, the situation is very grim for Hosseini's homeland.

How does Mathilde's pride result in suffering in the short story, "The Necklace"?Please help. THANKS in advance!

Although Mathilde Loisel was "pretty and charming... she had no dowry, no expectations," and yet she is never satisfied with the life she lives. She is "unhappy" and "suffered ceaselessly" because she feels that somehow her "beauty, grace and charm" should "take the place of family and birth." She constantly laments over all of the things she could never have but feels she deserves, and complains bitterly to her husband over the family's poor financial status. When, at last, her husband presents her with an invitation to an evening gala, Mathilde is still unsatisfied because she has nothing appropriate to wear. Even when her husband allows her to buy a gown with the money he has been saving to purchase a gun, she complains even further.

The solution, her husband decides, is to borrow jewels from her good friend, Madame Forestier, and, at last, Mathilde is happy. On the big night, she proves to be the belle of the ball, but at the end of the evening, she reverts to her old, unhappy self. The evening takes an even more drastic turn when Mathilde discovers that she has lost her friend's borrowed necklace. Mathilde's pride will not allow her to admit the accidental loss to Madame Forestier, so she and her husband buy time until they can arrange to purchase a replacement. For the next 10 years, they live the life of paupers in order to pay for the necklace which, of course, turns out to be made of paste. She loses her home, pride and looks while learning what suffering and misery really is. 

In Poor Richard's aphorism "A small leak will sink a great ship," what is the moral that is being taught?

Franklin's aphorisms were typically practical wisdom which the reader could apply to his own life based on his own experience and common sense. A "leak" in a person's own life might be interpreted as a small recurring expense that can add up to many hundreds or thousands of dollars over the years. An excellent example is cigarette smoking. Cigarettes are now selling for what seems to older people like myself the astronomical price of around five dollars a pack. Not a carton, but a pack! If a man started smoking only one pack a day at the age of twenty, he would be leaking $1825 a year out of his pocket, and if he continued smoking at the same rate for fifty years, assuming he managed to live that long, he would have leaked $91,250. But that would only be in capital. He would also have lost all the interest and compound interest he might have accumulated in that time. Furthermore, the price of cigarettes would probably continue to rise, and he would almost certainly increase his craving for nicotine over the years, so that he would be smoking two packs a day and maybe even three. In his lifetime this one "leak" could cost him as much as half a million dollars.

Most of us have "leaks" in our personal economies. As we get older and earn more money, we tend to develop more and bigger leaks. It makes good sense to look at our own lives, rather than worrying about Great Britain's or China's "leaks," and see what we could do to stop any small leak that is obvious. Americans are probably the most wasteful people in the world, so it should be easy for most of us to spot leaks. Examples that come to mind are unnecessary auto trips to the supermarket, leaving lights on in an unoccupied room, leaving the television set playing when nobody is watching it, putting too many postage stamps on a letter, using too much laundry detergent, wasting food, making unnecessary long-distance phone calls. In one of his essays (from which Franklin no doubt borrowed more than once) Sir Francis Bacon says to be especially cautious about incurring regular small expenses rather than worrying about big one-time expenditures. A one-time expenditure is not a leak, but a recurring small expenditure can definitely be described as a leak if it can be stopped.

Critically comment upon the relationship between John and Minnie Wright in Trifles.See how they are characterized. How does this characterization...

What you need to remember in studying this play is that the relationship between John and Minnie Wright acts as an example or a symbol even of relationships between men and women at the time of the play. Of course, your study of gender relations as they are presented in this play should not merely focus on the Wrights and their relationship, but also on the interactions and relationships between Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale and the males in the play, and in particular the assumptions that are made by the men about the women.

Focussing on the relationship between John and Minnie Wright, look closely at how Mrs. Hale describes Minnie before her marriage with John:

She used to wear pretty clothes and be lively when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls singing int he choir. But that - oh, that was thirty years ago.

Then later she says:

She - come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself - real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and - fluttery. How - she - did - change.

Notice how the dashes in the last sentence really emphasises the pity and shock felt at the transformation of Minnie. Mrs. Hale presents a picture of a kind, lovely and sensitive woman who is then oppressed and constricted by her marriage to John Wright, who Mrs. Hale describes as being "close" and says:

But he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters. Just to pass the time of day with him. (Shivers) Like a raw wind that gets to the bone.

The assumption that John Wright killed the bird, who, as established above, can be said to symbolically represent Minnie, shows us the reality of their marriage. Minnie's personality was crushed and strangled by John Wright - she wasn't allowed to go out at all, and he didn't let her buy any nice clothes. This allows Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters to piece together the motive for the crime, that they then hide from the menfolk in a moving act of solidarity with Mrs. Wright. The arrogance of men is therefore represented, as is the very secret and private world of women that men cannot understand.

Was Macduff not born of a woman, and "ripped" OR was he 'ripped' because his mother died before delivery?

This is an example of how the witches toyed with Macbeth. When they first met with him and Banquo, they told Macbeth two truths and offered one prediction (Act 1, scene 3):

"...All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Glamis! All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor! All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be King hereafter!"

Then, in Act 4, scene 1, the witches show him equivocating apparitions who, as Macbeth later says "lie like the truth." The second apparition is a bloody child who says,

Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn

The power of man, for none of woman born

Shall harm Macbeth.

The bloody child is Macduff, who, as a Caesarian section by birth was, as Macduff himself says, "from his mother's womb Untimely ripp'd." That's why the child was bloody, for it had on it the blood of the Caesarian  procedure. Of course this confounds Macbeth because the witches, through the apparition, were merely playing with words. A child who is born by Caesarian section is still "born of woman" but not in the strictest sense of a normal, birth-canal birth. (Why he was a Caesarian is not important, nor is the condition of Macduff's mother at the time of or after his birth). Very tricky indeed, especially so for literal-minded Macbeth.

What happens on the wrecked steamboat Huck and Jim go on in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?

I'm sorry, but we can not answer lists of unrelated questions on this site.  So I have edited your question...

In Chapter 12 and 13, Huck, Tom and Jim go onto a wrecked steamboat for an adventure.  But they get more than they bargained for because they find a gang of robbers on the boat.  Worse still, the raft the three have been traveling on breaks away and they are stuck on the steamboat with the robbers.

They eventually get away by stealing the robbers' boat, but only after a few very narrow escapes from being detected by the robbers.